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Thursday, April 20, 2017

#Fairplay: "Government should not set up a religious test for which kids get protection on playgrounds."

I spoke yesterday outside the U.S. Supreme Court during oral arguments in a court case over whether the Government can exclude kids who play on church-owned playgrounds from safety programs. The case could have broad implications across the nation for how governments treat faith-based institutions and individuals.
I really appreciated working together with colleagues from groups like Concerned Women for America (CWA) and Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) to highlight the message that Government should not set up a religious test for which kids get safety protections.

Check out photo and video highlights from CWA and ADF: (see 4/19 ADF video posted at 10:17 a.m. Apr 19). My remarks at the Court are on the ADF video noted above at around the 34:00-minute mark.
Following is text of my presentation:

At around 6pm on March 31, 2008, I was stopped by a couple of people on the street in Guying Town. They asked me to go with them. They told me they were from Guying Population and Family Planning Office when I asked who they were. However, they didn’t show me their badges. They wanted to take me into their car but I refused to comply. So those people beat me up and dragged me to the Guying Hospital, PLA Air Force Hospital and Litang Hospital, and asked them to do induced labor on me. But none of those hospitals was willing to do that to me.

At 11:00 p.m., they took me to the Laoyachen Hospital, and forcibly induced labor on me without any examination or my signature. Myseven-month unborn child was killed. At that time I was crying out loud for help and those people beat me up. They and some doctors and nurses pushed me onto the ground and took my pants off. Then they injected some medicine at my fetus’ location in my belly, and then they roped me onto a sickbed. I could not resist this and nobody came to help me. I could not imagine that this brutal and bloody behavior could happen in the civilized 21st century

This week the Trump administration acted to stop the US from subsidizing such government coercion, by finally enforcing a law that bars funding to organizations that either carry out or support abortion coercion. The news report from Capitol Hill:

The State Department has made a determination that the United Nations Population Fund (UNFPA) is ineligible to receive global health funds under the Kemp-Kasten Amendment. This longstanding appropriations rider precludes funding for any organizations that “supports or participates in the management of a program of coercive abortion or involuntary sterilization.” Despite the Kemp-Kasten Amendment, the Obama Administration continued to fund UNFPA.

In the memo transmitted to Congress on April 3, the State Department determination explains that China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) oversees the implementation of China’s “two-child” birth limit law and the NHFPC is listed as a UNFPA partner in Country Program 8. The determination says that “by implementing a portion of its family planning program in partnership with that government entity [NHFPC], UNFPA provides support for NHFPC’s implementation of China’s family planning policies, which includes coercive elements.”

Under this determination UNFPA will no longer receive funding, and those funds that are no longer available to UNFPA will be transferred to the Global Health Programs account for other family planning, maternal, and reproductive health activities.

Rep. Smith (l), Jonathan Imbody confer at White House

Congressman Chris Smith, Co-Chair of the Congressional Executive Commission on China, said in a statement that “In contrast to the Obama Administration’s silent acceptance of the coercion, suffering, and death of Chinese citizens, I am heartened by the Trump Administration’s early action to apply Kemp-Kasten and end US support for this most egregious human rights violation,” The complete release from Congressman Smith can be viewed here.